


The Language of Flowers

by ratherbeblue



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: College, Gen, Infidelity, M/M, Not Joseph Freindly, Recreational Drug Use, Trans Male Character, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-05 19:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11584176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherbeblue/pseuds/ratherbeblue
Summary: Damien never thought he’d be a dad.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is part one of a character study for Damien. I love this man and he loves his son so much and I wanted to focus on their relationship and Damien's past.  
> This fic will include a good amount of Mary shown in pretty good light so if you don't like her you probably won't enjoy this. I also made them college roommates, but I am a fan of the theory that they might be siblings.  
> I put the flower meanings in the end notes btw.

Damien never thought he’d be a dad. The thought rarely, if ever flitted to the the top of his consciousness, and when it did he dismissed it. His…peculiarities were not ones that fit with the image of a loving father. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if he was fixing line after line of code and a screaming child interrupted his work, or spilled ink over a freshly written letter, or if, god forbid, his child threw up on his period-accurate cloak.

No, that just wouldn’t do. So instead he made no plans of ever having a child, he filled his days with comp-sci homework and keeping Mary’s cats out of his pots of crocuses. He knew his anti-social behavior grated on Mary, just like her sloppy disposition grated on him, but he did well to ignore it for a long time. She was never _too_ pushy, always more of an understanding, yet needling, devil on his shoulder, telling him to let go of his worries for once and try something.

He ends up in a rave wearing a shirt Mary had ripped to shreds and pants that sit much too low on his hips for his taste, but between their bottle of wine pre-game and whatever the hell she slipped into his mouth when they got there he was feeling comfortable enough.

A few hours into watching Mary throw herself wildly to the music a man with a whole lot of facial piercings compliments his choker and doesn’t even laugh or seem bored when Damien tells him that Queen Victoria’s daughter in law always wore a choker to hide a scar on her neck.

Instead he smiles and asks Damien to tell him more, which he does, he gets a lot of chances to tell him more as they drive back to his shared dorm with Mary. He doesn’t get a chance to say anything in the morning though, because the man is gone without a trace.

Damien expects that to be it, one fun night to get Mary off his back and be a memory to laugh about later, of course life never gives Damien what is expected though.

Instead he woke up a month and a half later retching at the smell of Mary’s sizzling bacon, which he _told her_ not to cook while he was home. A minute after she saw him run by she knocked on the bathroom door, trying to hide her concern behind another jab.

“Okay, you’re a vegetarian, but this is a little dramatic, even for you.”

Damien said nothing, disgusted at his body and a little embarrassed, and Mary takes that as her cue to walk in. He turned to her with tired eyes and sweaty hair pushed away from his face by a trembling hand and she took one look at him before walking straight out the door, not saying one word as she gathered her keys and left the dorm completely.

 _Talk about dramatic._ Damien had thought at the time, but when she returned with a pregnancy test in her outstretched hand he understood the lack of joking in Mary’s demeanor.

A dark something made a home for itself in the pit of Damien’s stomach as he took it from her and closed himself in the bathroom for the second time that day. He didn’t open it until he had silently counted the 180 seconds it took for the second red line to appear next to the control.

Mary was sitting at the kitchen counter with two mugs of steeping tea and locked eyes with him immediately.

Damien gave a short nod, not knowing what else to do, and Mary smiled at him tenderly, without a hint of mocking, like she rarely ever does.

They didn’t say much to each other all weekend, didn’t leave each other’s sights either, but before they went to bed on Sunday night Mary told him she’d be there for him no matter what and left it at that.

That night while alone in his bed, Damien pressed a hand over the flat plane of his stomach and felt something bubbling up inside him, choking him almost, but when whatever it was escaped it was in the form of a laugh rather than the sob he expected. Damien never thought he’d be a dad, but now that he’s been given the chance he knows he can’t let it go.

Over the next few months Damien talked to Mary a lot, more openly and less biting than ever before, even though they had already been roommates for the last four years. Their bond deepened to something familial and Damien came to trust that she really would be there no matter what and he felt his fears blow away like a dandelion in the wind.

As the time grew closer and the planning grew more serious Damien wondered how he ever thought he wouldn’t want this. The child that he didn’t even know yet already felt like such an integral part of his being, like he wasn’t truly whole until it came along. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, keeping himself from wanting what he would never have. But instead everything has fallen into place, Mary is still there, a serious rock in Damien’s life when he needs it, graduation is only weeks away, and a job offer has shown up in his inbox for something well-paying enough that he wouldn’t have to worry for a while at least. And the cute baby clothes were too good to even think about.

To Damien this child was and always would be the light of his life, which is why, when he was finally born, he had to name him something appropriate for that role: Lucien.

Mary was the first person to visit him in the hospital, she would have been there the whole time but she was hours away at an internship when she got the call.  She walked in casually swinging the saddest bouquet Damien had ever seen. A few sprigs of baby’s breath thrown together and tied up with a piece of twine.

“You should be glad I brought you anything,” She told him, “it was hard as hell to lift that much from other people’s arrangements.”  Mary cracked a smile and Damien let out a laugh despite himself.  

It was good to have her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crocus- youthful joy, abuse not  
> Dandelions-overcoming hardship  
> Baby’s breath- innocence, purity of heart  
> -I used wikipedia because I couldn't find a good Victorian resource.


	2. II

Mary helped him find the house in the cul-de-sac, it wasn’t the biggest or the nicest, but the backyard was huge and there was a lot of room for renovations, which the man across the street cheerfully told him he could help out with.

The first thing he planted in the new house was a row of windowsill celandines, the bright yellow lit up the entire kitchen and Lucien loved it when he handed over one of the bright buds for him to play with.

Mary stayed as long as she could, but soon enough she was back in the next town over taking care of her own life while Damien was alone again. Well almost alone, he had Lucien.

Lucien was the perfect child and Damien wasn’t sure how he got so lucky. He was quiet to the point where Damien was constantly terrified, but still happy. Always ate a full meal and rarely cried if nothing was wrong, he liked to pull Damien’s hair to test his strength and cried when it was pulled back so he couldn’t grab it.

For the first three years of his life he rarely ever left Damien’s sight. Thanks to a job he worked from home Damien was able to spend every waking moment with his son, and even at night he slept with his body curled around him, keeping him safe and close so nothing could hurt him.

He rushed to the doctor in a panic the first time he heard a weak cough come out of his son’s tiny mouth and didn’t breathe until the doctor good-naturedly told him it was nothing to worry about. She recognized him again a few months later when they came in for Lucien’s booster shots and she congratulated him for being such a brave boy around needles. Damien kept his mouth shut about Lucien probably being used to them at this point lest it illicit a negative or questioning response.

They spent afternoons planting rows of trees and flowers in the back garden, Lucien either strapped close to his chest, or chasing after butterflies close by. Damien dressed him in a mixture of practical clothing and Victorian inspired dress that, while adorable at the time, would no doubt embarrass him in the future.

While it was mostly himself and Lucien that he kept to, Damien used Mary’s long-distance absence as an excuse to pick back up letter writing, he hadn’t written one since his parent’s stopped talking to him, he wrote to her about Lucien and his hopes and his fears, and didn’t mention anything about the letter he had sent to her when she called.

She didn’t mention it either, but he did get a reply.

_Dearest Dames,_

_Are you for real with these things?_

_xoxo,_

_Mary_

They continued both sides of their correspondence though, even if Mary told him she feels really weird trying to come up with the same kind of cool words he uses. Damien told her it’s the thought that counts and she accepted it. At one point she completely blind-sided him by writing him about a man she had met and not mentioning him at all otherwise. Apparently they had run into each other at a bar and gotten married the same night. Damien was worried for her, but she always knew how to handle these things better than him so he let her be.

He and his son became so close in their own separate world Damien could hardly stand the ache in his chest when he had to send him off to school. He was terrified of what could happen to him, Lucien was so smart and kind, would the other kids hurt his feelings? He was healthy, but didn’t have much experience playing outside of their backyard, what if he got hurt? What if the teachers said something about Damien to him? Something hurtful…would Lucien be confused, or angry, or resentful of him? All the possibilities gnawed at him, making himself almost physically ill with worry all day and causing him to cry to himself in the car after dropping him off.

His fears turned out to be mostly dramaticisms his own mind crafted, but he was too happy to dwell on that when Damien ran into his arms babbling about everything that had happened that day.

He wrote Mary a letter that night, but before she even got it she told him she was coming back.

With all the free time he was left with while Lucien was at school Damien finally got to making some of the renovations he had wanted to since they moved in, and he took up the neighbor’s offer of help. He learned his name was Brian and he was in the process of adopting a child. Damien thought to himself that that made a lot of sense, the man certainly seemed like he was one of the lucky few born to be a dad.

Brian helped him pick out the right kind of decorative molding and didn’t raise an eyebrow when Damien loaded a bucket of black paint into the cart. In all honesty Damien was a little surprised at how open-minded everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be about his eccentricities.

There were a few houses that were empty, but of the neighbors he did know they were all very welcoming, two young couples had moved in recently, and although they were both a bit frazzled with their young children they made sure to get to know him as much as possible. The only neighbor Damien really didn’t know much about was the man who lived next door with the loud truck that only ever seemed to go somewhere in the middle of the night when Damien was trying to catch up on work.

After a long day of working on the house Damien thanked Brian profusely with a full spread for afternoon tea, wished him luck with the adoption, and walked him to the door like a gentleman. Damien picked up Lucien that after that and they spent the rest of the day in the garden, planting rows of wisteria and witch hazel in anticipation of Mary’s arrival.

In many ways the garden felt like a piece of his own heart, or at least a window into it. Many plants were put there based purely for aesthetic value, but others were special. Others, like the celandines he planted when they first moved in, were reminders or symbols of things that had come to pass, or hopes for the future. At any rate Lucien seemed to like the pretty colors and pretending to help plant things with him.

Before Mary arrived the house had been affixed with decorative molding and windowsills and painted entirely in blacks and purples, the sapling trees that lead down the stone path in the backyard weren’t as impressive as they would be one day, but all in all Damien was proud of it, and excited to show it off to his friend and her new husband.

Damien didn’t get to meet Mary’s husband when she came back into town though. She claimed he was busy, but after a week of that excuse Damien couldn’t help but feel like he was avoiding him for some reason. Mary said he was having a hard time trying to get settled down, apparently he was pretty wild, which partially explained the elopement, and he had to do a bunch of family stuff before he could get access to the money they needed to relocate.

“Yeah,” Mary had explained. “He’s rich…like trust fund house boat rich.”

That Damien could understand, and if he’s anything like how Mary describes him they must be a match made in heaven, a joke Damien makes just to see her eyes roll back into her head like old times.

Luckily just a few weeks after they moved into town a for-sale sign popped up in the front lawn of the house right next to Damien’s mysterious neighbor with the truck and Mary snagged it up right away.

Everything seemed to be perfect for a while, Lucien thrived and enjoyed school, although his teachers sometimes were worried he was too quiet, Mary came over as often as possible and got a job at the animal shelter down the street, and Damien continued to design Victorian inspired covers for his many Ikea storage solutions. Even Mary’s husband seemed fine, a little bit of a weird guy who didn’t completely seem to get Damien, or make too much of an effort to, but then again most people didn’t. Damien tried not to be so harsh on him because Mary seemed to really love him a lot and he was probably dealing with his own problems, something to do with the church, Mary had told him.

Mary had told him not to worry too much though.

Mary never wanted to worry.

Mary was 7 months pregnant when she showed up at his house to tell him Joseph was cheating on her.

She wasn’t exactly crying yet, but she was well on her way when Damien let her in. He listened while she told him everything, how she found out, who she thinks it is, why she thinks it’s happening. After an hour of listening to her he finally decided what to say, although he was uncertain how well she would take it.

“Mary…you can’t let him do this to you.”

She glared at him, eyes red-rimmed and tired.

“Oh what the hell would you know? When’s the last time you were in a relationship that lasted more than one night?”

“Mary…” Damien breathed, the amount of truth hurting more than it probably should when he knows Mary’s just deflecting.

“Screw this, I’m out of here.”

She left with shaking hands and Damien wished he had handled it better.

Two weeks later she was back with an apology and a bottle of red. She pushed through his door, past him, and poured them each a glass in his kitchen while he said nothing. What could he possibly say? He had no business meddling in her life when it had nothing to do with him. She had never told him how to raise Lucien, how could he tell her how to run her marriage.

“I’m sorry.” She told him, the words seem to physically pain her, and Damien knows she never truly figured out to admit she was wrong like this, but her unflinching, unapologetic nature is one of the reasons he loves her so he appreciated it none the less.

She slams her half-full glass of wine and Damien takes her empty hand in his gently.

“Mary, you know I’m here for you, if you need a place to stay or…anything, I’m here.” He knows it’s the least he can do, re-pay the favor she did for him years ago.

“It’s not that simple, Dames.” She sighed heavily, and Damien could tell she was itching for another glass of wine already. “I’ve fucked up so many things in my life and I just don’t want him to be another one. I know the man I married is still there somewhere, and I’m not going to give up now before I find him.”

“Okay…” He hugged her, pressing his nose to the soft dark roots of her hair. “Okay.”

Mary tried valiantly over the next few years to keep herself together, and at many times Damien wondered if he was doing alright by her by letting her get to the point she eventually did. She was scared to go home when Joseph was there and terrified she would drink herself to death if he wasn’t. She became friends with the man her husband cheated on her with, apparently they had a lot in common besides being cheated on by the same guy, and desperately tried to chase the same thrills she did back in college. At least she seemed to be doing well when he had time to volunteer with her at the shelter

If he ever brought it up she tried to spin it into a conversation about his love life, or lack thereof. She had understood when Lucien was just a baby, he just couldn’t bring something as volatile as a relationship into a house with his infant son, but now she was starting to argue that he would be old enough to understand, and Damien loathed to disagree. Lucien was very smart, and very mature for a ten-year-old.

At Mary’s insistence Damien tried more as Lucien got older, but every date ended with some piece of information about Damien being the deal breaker and the morning glory’s planted in his garden would multiply with each failure.

He was ready to give up completely by time the last house in the cul-de-sac finally found an owner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Celandine-joys to come  
> Wisteria-welcome  
> Witch hazel-magic  
> Morning glory-love in vain


End file.
